Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory

In the summer of 2001, Peter Hessler, the longtime Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, acquired his Chinese driver's license. For the next seven years, he traveled the country, tracking how the automobile and improved roads were transforming China.

Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China

A century ago, outsiders saw China as a place where nothing ever changes. Today, the country has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. In Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler explores the human side of China's transformation, viewing modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world through the lives of a handful of ordinary people.

River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze

In the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this ever-evolving country, Fuling is heading down a new path of change and growth, which came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident.

China in Ten Words

From one of China’s most acclaimed writers, his first work of nonfiction to appear in English: a unique, intimate look at the Chinese experience over the last several decades, told through personal stories and astute analysis that sharply illuminate the country’s meteoric economic and social transformation. Characterized by Yu Hua’s trademark wit, insight, and courage, China in Ten Words is a refreshingly candid vision of the “Chinese miracle” and all its consequences, from the singularly invaluable perspective of a writer living in China today.

Mao: The Unknown Story

Based on a decade of research and on interviews with many of Mao's close circle in China who have never talked before, and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him, this is the most authoritative biography of Mao ever written.

Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

As the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, Evan Osnos was on the ground in China for years, witness to profound political, economic, and cultural upheaval. In Age of Ambition, he describes the greatest collision taking place in that country: the clash between the rise of the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control.

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

Few books have had such an impact as Wild Swans: a popular best seller which has sold more than 13 million copies and a critically acclaimed history of China; a tragic tale of nightmarish cruelty and an uplifting story of bravery and survival.

Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China

There are more than 320 million Chinese between the ages of 16 and 30. Children of the one-child policy, born after Mao, with no memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre, they are the first net native generation to come of age in a market-driven, more international China. Their experiences and aspirations were formed in a radically different country from the one that shaped their elders, and their lives will decide the future of their nation and its place in the world.

The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao

The Souls of China tells the story of one of the world's great spiritual revivals. Following a century of violent antireligious campaigns, China is now filled with new temples, churches, and mosques - as well as cults, sects, and politicians trying to harness religion for their own ends. Driving this explosion of faith is uncertainty - over what it means to be Chinese and how to live an ethical life in a country that discarded traditional morality a century ago and is searching for new guideposts.

Strange Stones

Full of unforgettable figures and an unrelenting spirit of adventure, Strange Stones is a far-ranging, thought-provoking collection of Peter Hessler’s best reportage - a dazzling display of the powerful storytelling, shrewd cultural insight, and warm sense of humor that are the trademarks of his work. Over the last decade, as a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of three books, Peter Hessler has lived in Asia and the United States, writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider in these two very different regions.

The American Civil War

Between 1861 and 1865, the clash of the greatest armies the Western hemisphere had ever seen turned small towns, little-known streams, and obscure meadows in the American countryside into names we will always remember. In those great battles, those streams ran red with blood-and the United States was truly born.

Chemistry: A Novel

Three years into her graduate studies at a demanding Boston university, the unnamed narrator of this nimbly wry, concise debut finds her onetime love for chemistry is more hypothesis than reality. She's tormented by her failed research - and reminded of her delays by her peers, her advisor, and most of all her Chinese parents, who have always expected nothing short of excellence from her throughout her life.

China: A History

Many nations define themselves in terms of territory or people; China defines itself in terms of history. Taking into account the country's unrivaled, voluminous tradition of history writing, John Keay has composed a vital and illuminating overview of the nation's complex and vivid past. Keay's authoritative history examines 5,000 years in China, from the time of the Three Dynasties through Chairman Mao and the current economic transformation of the country.

Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

At the age of 16, in a nationwide selection for royal consorts, Cixi was chosen as one of the emperor's numerous concubines. When he died in 1861, their five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a palace coup against the regents appointed by her husband and made herself the real ruler of China - behind the throne, literally, with a silk screen separating her from her officials who were all male.

Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power

For many years after its reform and opening in 1978, China maintained an attitude of false modesty about its ambitions. That role, reports Howard French, has been set aside. China has asserted its place among the global heavyweights, revealing its plans for pan-Asian dominance by building its navy, increasing territorial claims to areas like the South China Sea, and diplomatically bullying smaller players.

The Water Kingdom: A Secret History of China

From the Yangtze to the Yellow River, China is traversed by great waterways, which have defined its politics and ways of life for centuries. Water has been so integral to China's culture, economy, and growth and development that it provides a window on the whole sweep of Chinese history. In The Water Kingdom, renowned writer Philip Ball opens that window to offer an epic and powerful new way of thinking about Chinese civilization. Water, Ball shows, is a key that unlocks much of Chinese culture.

Dealing with China: An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower

When Hu Jintao, China's then vice president, came to visit the New York Stock Exchange and Ground Zero in 2002, he asked Hank Paulson to be his guide. It was a testament to the pivotal role that Goldman Sachs played in helping China experiment with private enterprise. In Dealing with China, the best-selling author of On the Brink draws on his unprecedented access to both the political and business leaders of modern China to answer several key questions.

The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962-1976

After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives from 1958-1962, an aging Mao Zedong launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The stated goal of the Cultural Revolution was to purge the country of bourgeois, capitalistic elements he claimed were threatening genuine communist ideology.

Each lesson in lessons 1 to 5 provides 30 minutes of spoken language practice, with an introductory conversation and new vocabulary and structures. Detailed instructions enable you to understand and participate in the conversation. Each lesson contains practice for vocabulary introduced in previous lessons. The emphasis is on pronunciation and comprehension and on learning to speak Mandarin Chinese.

The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present

Our relationship with China remains one of the most complex and rapidly evolving and is perhaps one of the most important to our nation's future. Here, John Pomfret, the author of the best-selling Chinese Lessons, takes us deep into these two countries' shared history and illuminates in vibrant, stunning detail every major event, relationship, and ongoing development that has affected diplomacy between these two booming, influential nations.

D. Keith says:"Indispensable for understanding the US China relationship"

Too Big to Fail

A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America's financial history by an acclaimed New York Times reporter. Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true, behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Lily is haunted by memories of who she once was, and of a person, long gone, who defined her existence. She has nothing but time now, as she recounts the tale of Snow Flower and asks the gods for forgiveness.

Publisher's Summary

China has 130 million migrant workers - the largest migration in human history. In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang, a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women, whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of Dongguan, an industrial city in China's Pearl River Delta.

As she tracks their lives, Chang paints a never-before-seen picture of migrant life - a world where nearly everyone is under 30; where you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a mobile phone; and where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. Chang takes us inside a sneaker factory so large that it has its own hospital, movie theater, and fire department; to posh karaoke bars that are fronts for prostitution; to makeshift English classes where students shave their heads in monklike devotion and sit day after day in front of machines watching English words flash by; and back to a farming village for the Chinese New Year, revealing the poverty and idleness of rural life that drive young girls to leave home in the first place. Throughout this riveting portrait, Chang also interweaves the story of her own family's migrations, within China and to the West, providing historical and personal frames of reference for her investigation.

A book of global significance that provides new insight into China, Factory Girls demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and transforming Chinese society, much as immigration to America's shores remade our own country a century ago.

What the Critics Say

"A gifted storyteller, Chang plumbs...private narratives to craft a work of universal relevance." (Publishers Weekly)"An exceptionally vivid and compassionate depiction of the day-to-day dramas, and the fears and aspirations, of the real people who are powering China's economic boom." (The New York Times)

Leslie Chang, a Chinese-American writer, has produced an informative volume about the Chinese migration of women from rural areas and life to urban living. She accomplishes this by telling the stories of individual and groups of women. She illustrates the book with direct quotes and closely written stories. She works very hard to help the reader understand what is taking place through Chinese eyes.

The book is great to listen to and is very informative. After listening I thought that the same information could have been presented in less space and with fewer words. After a few days of reflection, however, I believe her approach enables to listener/reader to internalize the situation in urban China or get a feel for what is taking place. The cumulative effect is positive and was, in my case, informative.

People come and go so quickly around here. The story is fascinating, frustrating, lonely, hard and hopeful. The book is well written and the narrator perfectly propels it. Everything here is in flux - dirt, roads, small and large factories, the women, the jobs, the buildings, the worker dormatories, the buses. People jump jobs over and over, inching up the ladder toward a yearned for success. In Thomas Friedman's books he is the one on the move; here, Leslie Chang stands in stillness to capture the whirlwind around her. A very good read.

Having traveled in China and Taiwan and visited many factories from the late 1980's to the present time, this book tells 'the rest of the story'... what I have wondered about on each of my factory visits... who are these people that are working in the factories? and where did they come from?, what are they thinking?, etc. And it tells the personal struggles of the 20th Century for a highly sophisticated culture. I wish every high school student in the USA would read this.

The subject matter of this book is compelling from so many different perspectives. Having lived in Shenzhen since the mid-90's, and having spent many years in the trading business and more time than I care to admit trudging around factories in China, I was very excited to see this book come out, and was expecting so much from it. The information conveyed here is really good, and the author does a very workmanlike job of conveying factual (mostly) information. The writing, however, is horrendous. I've read better on the back of cereal boxes - seriously. I honestly don't understand why a publisher would let this out of their shop - I can only guess its because of her connections with the WSJ. And the only thing worse than the writing is the narration. The narrator has no passion for the subject matter, and it comes off exactly that way. She makes bland writing even worse. And as for the pronunciation of the Chinese, it's abysmal, inconsistent (the city of Dongguan comes up several hundred times in the book, and she butchers it at least 6 different ways, including pronouncing backwards once); I didn't hear one Chinese word that was even close to correct pronunciation. For anyone that lives in China interested in this compelling topic, it's like listening to fingernails on a chalkboard. I struggled through it only because I have a personal interest in the topic. If I saw anything else from this writer or the narrator, I'd steer well clear of it.

This was written by the wife of teacher/ writer Peter Hessler. She gives us the Chinese perspective of China as we move through modern places like Shenzhen and rural places that are fast becoming modern. It is the women that are leading this change. Many leave their villages in search of a better life. Sometimes they lie or charm their way up the ladder of success. Sometime they improve themselves through study, but they are very driven to make lives better. We discover how lost some of the women are as they traverse the bridge to modernity from the simplicity of farm life before. We come to understand the pressure many feel as they become the matriarchs of their poor families. Many are expected to return during the rural holidays with electronic gifts like washing machines or air conditioners to lavish on their hard working, less educated parents. I have been in China for a brief 4 years, but can see where many people succeed there are also many that fail. We are left with a glimpse of how hard it is to make it in the number two world economy right now. We are left to ponder the outcome of this machine that is leveling everything old and reshaping itself into something that will blend the old with the new in an exciting and shocking way.

My title says it all - if you are interested in contemporary China - this is worth a listen. Although the author is young, she is intelligent, insightful, and a good writer.

The book starts strong by helping the listener to understand the unprecedented changes sweeping China as millions move from the country to the city looking for work. In the process, everything changes: the villages are empty (especially of young girls), the city folk are not happy to be inundated by uncultured country folk, the immigrants have to create new lives and identities, and huge factory operations have to be maintained against a backdrop of untrained workers who are constantly leaving and returning to work.

Along the way, the reader learns more about what has happened in China over the last 150 years (think Boxer Rebellion and colonization; think warring factions within China; think of the brutal, self-inflicted wounds of Mao's rule) and how the latest migration is but one of many migrations over thousands of years for Chinese people - including the migration of the author's family to the US.

My biggest gripe about this book is that it is too long and repeatedly bogs down in the details of some of the characters it follows. She does best when she is looking at the big picture and helping to sort out trends.

The largest migration in the history of the world is unfolding in China, as the rural young from agricultural villages make their way to way to factories in the cities. Chang, a Chinese-American reporter for the Wall Street Journal, spends three years following the lives of two young women as they struggle to make a new life (and invent a new China) in the factory city of Dongguan.

In the process of learning about migration and urbanization in China, we also follow Chang on her own journey to understand her families past, with her relatives participating, victimization and triumph through revolution, migration, the cultural revolution, assimilation, and authoritarian capitalism. The experience of the "factory girls" that Chang follows stands in for the experiences of millions of Chinese, as well as the larger global story of the move from the country to the city.

The young ladies that Chang profiles are forced to re-invent themselves at each step, while struggling to maintain links to the village families that they have left behind. This migration, and the changes that this flow of labor brings to China (and global capitalism) one of the most important stories of our time, is beautifully and sensitively told in this heart-breaking, hopeful and important book.

This book talks about the changes in society that have been occuring in the past 20 years. It follows the life of several different immigrant women moving from the village into the city to work in factories making export goods. Its shows that this is a time of hugh changes in Chinese society for women. An excellent story.

Very well written, good narration, and good audio quality. I was a little disappointed in that there was very little mention of non-migrant workers who also are in the same boat as the authors friends. Specifically, what is the fate of institutionalized girls within the factor workforce?